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Love special: Obsession and stalking

Unfortunately, it’s not all wine and roses when it comes to love. Ecstasy, euphoria, elation and contentment may be accompanied by jealousy, rage, rejection, anger and hatred. These emotions can spawn anything from obsession and domestic violence to stalking and even murder of supposed loved ones (see “What is this thing called love?”). While such behaviours may be classed as pathological, and perhaps rare, the truth is that they are closer to home than we dare contemplate. Many psychiatrists believe that passion’s thrills resemble obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But in some people, love can conjure up something much more sinister. Murdering a spouse is as extreme as it gets, but an important predictor of spousal homicide is stalking, and that is more common than you might like to think. Lucy Middleton explores this neglected crime of passion

LOUISA’s life turned into a living hell when she dumped her boyfriend, Carl. A few weeks later, to her horror, she realised Carl was following her. Then came the phone calls, the emails, and one dead pet cat…

Louisa’s tale is all too familiar. In the US alone, over a million women and more than 370,000 men are stalked annually. Stalking, or “obsessional following”, usually has three components&colon; unwanted following or harassment, a real threat, and feelings of fear in the victim. All stalking cases are a personal violation for the victim, and the most serious can result in sexual or physical assault, or even murder.

When Brian Spitzberg of San Diego State University in California reviewed 103 stalking studies he found that 23.5 per cent of women and 10.5 per …